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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26015545">A Visit Home</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Borf/pseuds/Borf'>Borf</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danny Phantom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Gen, No Dialogue, That's a lie, one dialogue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:29:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,577</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26015545</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Borf/pseuds/Borf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny comes back to FentonWorks after college.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Visit Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Danny sets foot in Amity Park again after so long, he never thought the first place he went to would be FentonWorks. He had thought he would go to the Nasty Burger, maybe visit Sam and Tuck, but Danny found himself beelining for his home as soon as he entered Amity. As he walks the side streets, remembering shortcuts that aren’t there anymore because of new construction, he breathes in the fizzy air that signifies a haunt. His haunt. He missed this; he missed home.</p><p>The bright, obnoxious sign reading ‘FentonWorks’ in gaudy letters still hangs below the Ops Center which is rusting slightly from lack of care. It’s been a while, and they did all they could to preserve the original shiny sheen of metal that practically coated the Ops Center like a film. A woman stands outside Danny’s home, asking for money and handing out bright orange and blue tickets. As he shills out 10 dollars – “Both colors, please.” – the woman does not recognize him. This is on purpose; how wouldn’t it be with his dyed blonde hair and his brown colored contacts?</p><p>Pressing his lips into a thin line, Danny pushes open the front door and takes two steps inside before stopping abruptly. Three people bustle about the ground floor, but pay him no mind. Two adults and their daughter, all related. The daughter flits around the couch, giving the coffee table a look up and down, up and down, checking it for imperfections – or that’s what Danny thinks, at least. Her hair, a bright orange in contrast against the blues of the interior walls of the living room, bobs and swishes as she twists her head around. </p><p>Wow. Danny really missed Jazz a lot. He still does, even with her at the forefront of his mind, orange hair staring him right in the face. Danny thinks of Jazz as the girl stops her scrutinizing and hops over to her parents. Danny thinks of Jazz as he watches the three step and jump about the ground floor – into the kitchen, out of the kitchen, maybe the lab, Danny can’t tell.</p><p>It’s only when the three have made their way upstairs that Danny can finally breathe again. Slowly, he lets his body relax, one muscle at a time. He licks his lips, keeps himself from crying, and walks over to the couch at a pace that would make a snail jealous. </p><p>He’s not supposed to touch anything; he knows nothing better than this at the moment, but he still wants to run his fingers over the couch. Will it still be as soft as he remembers? Or will it be a cruel mockery of once was? Or was the couch never soft at all – is he just replacing his own couch Sam’s soft, lush one? He doesn’t know. He’ll never know (maybe that’s not true; he can always ask Clockwork, but he doesn’t really want to; he doesn’t want to take the chance that maybe everything wasn’t as good as he remembers it being).</p><p>As he moves on to the kitchen, it’s in a bubbly haze, and he thinks he hears screaming from the Ops Center. That makes sense. The Ops Center is cool. </p><p>He looks at the refrigerator and a few rebellious tears wiggle their way down his cheeks. He bites his lip so hard it draws blood to keep himself from making any noise, to keep himself from thinking of family dinners abundant with ecto-weenies and undead Thanksgiving turkeys (“That only happed <em> once</em>, Danno!”). He turns away from the refrigerator, resolving to go somewhere else. Where to? He asks himself. He doesn’t particularly want to go to the lab – to many bad memories, mainly his death – and he doesn’t want to go upstairs with those people up there, probably looking at his stuff and speculating about–</p><p>Nope. Stop right there, Fen– A deep breath in. A slow exhale. Get a <em> hold </em> of yourself.</p><p>Deciding to deal with people over dealing with the lab, Danny marches his way upstairs. His room is just as he remembers it, everything in perfect order. Perfect, down to the mess that is his bedsheets and the way his model rockets are positioned. The only thing they got wrong, however, is the fact that homework sheets are haphazardly spread around the desk. He hardly had had time to get his homework out of his bag in the first place, let alone out of his binder and onto the desk. Hell, he had hardly ever put homework <em> in </em>his binder, back then. </p><p>He does, now, considering both the Fenton Portal and Vlad’s portal are both turned off. And though Danny doubts Vlad wanted either of them shut down, he doesn’t think Vlad had much of a choice. Either way, it was a matter of town-wide security once they figured out where all the ghosts were coming from. He still shows up as Phantom, now and again, though everyone who might’ve swooned over him is long gone. Though some had moved back to Amity, most didn’t bother coming back to live there. Paulina would only leave for her grave when she died. Paulina… if Danny looks hard enough, he thinks he can see a picture of Paulina and him on his desk from when he dated her-as-Kitty. He rolls his eyes and steels himself to look in Jazz’s room.</p><p>The first thing he notices is that it’s a jarringly different shade of pink. Too bright. Danny breaks down crying. He can’t look at any more of her room – her desk, perfectly parallel to the wall it’s leaning against and perfectly perpendicular to the wall it’s adjacent to. The papers on it are in neat stacks, and there are labels on everything. Her bed is made – not how she would’ve, <em> never </em>how she would have – and the wall opposite her bed is lined with a tall bookshelf that is in turn lined with books.</p><p>Danny hadn’t looked at it long enough to see the titles, but he can imagine them being as accurate to her character as possible. Maybe even stereotypically so, only being books on psychology and math. Because that’s what she was to them. A caricature of someone they didn’t really know. Would never know.</p><p>He hates this. Never should have come back.</p><p>He doesn’t realize he’s walking, much less walking out of the house and towards Cindy's Diner, but he does eventually. When he’s at the front door. Cindy’s Diner sits in front of the graveyard, right next to its entrance. As he stands by the door, facing the graveyard, he thinks that he can just go inside the diner and <em> not </em> to the graveyard, where his body really wants him to be for some reason. When he goes into the Diner and gets seated by a window that has a full view of the graveyard, Danny knows he’s doomed. Either way, he pointedly faces away from the window and endeavors to enjoy his meal. He looks at the menu, choices galore, and he’s happy.</p><p>(This does not last)</p><p>Sighing as he pays the bill, Danny knows that he was going to visit the graveyard sooner or later – he always does when he visits, though he doesn’t visit often. He gets up, drags a heavy hand over his pale face, and he walks out the door and towards the graveyard. He has a single destination in mind: a spot beneath the hill where he’d always liked to stargaze. His mother bought that plot of land for the family graves because they frequented the hill when he was younger. Much younger than he was now. </p><p>He doesn’t buy flowers on the way there – he’s never bought flowers, always preferring to make them out of ice so that they last until his next visit. As he comes up on the Foley plot, he decides that maybe he can make a few more flowers today. He’s got the time, and the energy, so it’ll be fine. There are not many people around today, so Danny takes a shaky breath as he crouches down next to the grave, forming two pretty ice flowers in his hands. A heliotrope and a daffodil. Everyone gets a heliotrope, and each something else. Besides, Danny thinks, swallowing back tears, Tucker’s always liked daffodils.</p><p>He didn’t come here to visit his friends, but he plods towards Sam anyway. Hers read <em> Sam Manson</em>, as she directed in her will. Slowly, he crouches down and gently sets an ice heliotrope and an ice borage against the stone. Danny didn’t expect to be crying this much today. Finally, after what feels like years of wallowing in his sadness, Danny turns towards his parents’, his sisters’, and his graves. For mom, he puts down a heliotrope and an edelweiss; for dad, he puts a coreopsis and a heliotrope; for Jazz, he puts a heliotrope and a clematis; for himself, he puts a dill as a joke. </p><p>He doesn’t laugh.</p><p>He bites his lip, tracing the delicate stonework of the names, the years. '<em>Madeline Fenton,' </em> reads mom’s, '<em>loving mother, loving wife. 1972 – 2043</em>.' '<em>Jack Fenton,' </em> says dad’s, '<em>loving father, loving husband. 1974 - 2037.'</em> '<em>Jasmine Fenton</em>,' he reads through blurred eyes – it’s Jazz, <em> Jazz. </em> Jazz who never got married. Jazz who stayed with their parents when he couldn’t. '<em>Loving daughter, loving sister. 1988 - 2056 </em>.' </p><p><em>'Daniel Fenton,'</em> reads his own grave, '<em>loving son, loving brother. 1989 - Unknown.' </em> </p><p>It’s 3457, and he still hasn’t died.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This came out a lot less sad than when I thought of it. How sad.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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